An Introduction About RSS Document

An RSS document is made up of ‘items’, comprising a title, a link to the content and a description of that item. For instance, for a news article, the title will be like a headline, the link will take readers to the news article and the description will summarize the news they’ll find on clicking the link to visit your site. The items are grouped into a ‘channel’ or ‘feed’. This is the name you assign to your ongoing series of RSS documents.

RSS documents are created in XML, or Extensible Markup Language, which is fast becoming the markup language for the Web. HTML tags instruct the browser how to display content (fonts, images or otherwise); XML tags define the nature of the information.

The XML file can be updated manually or by using modules to increase the speed of the process. The feed is prepared by transforming the RSS file into HTML. A scripting command named server-side include is used to place the content on the Web page as a template. Once the module has been developed, it’s really just a matter of sitting back and letting the content stream in.

The files can be accessed from our own Web site or by registering our feed with content aggregators, or sites that list various feeds. Individual RSS readers can subscribe directly to our feeds through these options. Other Web sites can also do the same, bringing more hits to our content. And we, as a content manager, can subscribe to other sites’ or aggregators’ feeds as well. This will provide our site visitors with news and material that we may not have the time to develop.